History of 1970 Alternative Media Conference Slideshow with Larry Yurdin

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The Alternative Media Conference took place at Goddard College from June 17-20, 1970 and brought over 1,700 innovative FM radio DJs, a new breed of record company promoters, underground newspaper reporters, Freek Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, Baba Ram Dass, Rolling Stone photographer Robert Altman, 1960s radical Jerry Rubin, Mad Magazine Founder Harvey Kurtzman, the Hog Farm Collective and many others all the way to Plainfield, VT. This conference covered topics including women in the media, black-oriented radio, and low-budget films.

Atlantic Records donated $3,000 and shipped in Dr. John, Cactus and the J. Geils Band to put on concerts. Many conference attendees went on to exciting media careers, including Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor at the New Yorker, and Danny Goldberg, whose company has managed the careers of rockers Nirvana, the Allman Brothers and Bonnie Raitt. The conference is remembered as the birth of alternative media, as well as the birth of WGDR, Goddard Community Radio station, and continues to be held as a time that was rich in urgency for change.

Goddard College reconvened the conference on May 18, 2013 in order to review what had happened in the 43 years since the original conference was held but also to bring people together to plan and imagine what the next 40 years will bring. As part of the conference the organizer of the original conference, Larry Yurdin, gave this history presentation with archival slides to the audience of 170 people gathered in the Haybarn Theatre at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT.

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